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Ireland is planning to send asylum seekers back to the U.K. under emergency legislation, in an effort to curb irregular arrivals through Northern Ireland.
“I’ll have emergency legislation at Cabinet this week to make sure that we can effectively return people to the U.K.,” Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee told public broadcaster RTÉ on Sunday.
The minister added she would “raise these issues” during a meeting with British Home Secretary James Cleverly on Monday.
In a statement shared with RTÉ, a spokesperson for Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris confirmed that the justice minister had been tasked to “bring proposals to Cabinet next week to amend existing law regarding the designation of safe ‘third countries’ and allowing the return of inadmissible International Protection applicants to the U.K.”
The move comes after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that the rising numbers of people seeking asylum in Ireland was proof that the Conservatives’ plan to deport people to Rwanda has worked as a “deterrent … because people are worried about coming here.”
A key condition of the Brexit deal that took the U.K. out of the EU was to maintain the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland open, with no immigration checks.
Speaking at a parliamentary hearing earlier this week, McEntee said that more than 80 percent of asylum seekers coming to Ireland arrived from Northern Ireland.
